I just posted on Events Calendar...an opportunity to meet Grabriele Bonci in NYC at Eataly -strictly demo and tasting, not a hands-on class. Should be a fun time. I'm sure it's coinciding his US book release (English edition)...

i know coppertop went,not sure she is going to post. i am going to visit my son who attended the professional session in the morning on 10 /21. i am going to get all of the material from him,11/11/13. what he had told me so far is that the method is very interesting.lots of well know pizza and bread people attended. bonci made a 200 pound batch of dough.

Hi all, Im new to this site and am so excited to find some information about Pizzarium.

My partner and I were in Italy a few months ago and spent time in Rome and Naples/Sorrento. We had pizza at Pizzarium after and long tour of the Vatican. We were exhausted and would have loved to have sat a cafe and rested, but made the hike back around the Vatican to Pizzarium to have a break and eat.

The pizza case was mesmerizing with all of the choices. My favorite was a potato pizza. The suppli were pretty amazing as well. As there is no place to sit inside the small space of Pizzarium we took our treasure outside to the street to eat sitting on a concrete wall. What might sound horrible was one of our most memorable dining experiences in Rome. Despite our tired feet, cultural overload and lack of American style dining amenities: we wondered back to the subway trying to articulate what had just happened.

The simplest of ingredients had been transformed beyond their individual characteristics into something that transcended the components themselves. This was our overall food take away from our trip aside from the cultural and artistic aspect. Perfect simple ingredients combined in a way that transcends the individual components themselves.

We had pizza in Naples and Sorrento also and back in the states dreamed of the Italian foodscape. Im still searching for eggs like the ones in Italy.

I'm by no means a skilled pizza maker. But these memories have inspired my search for a WFO and a chance to recreate the spirit of those food memories at home.

I'll be combing over the post here and look forward to trying some the the recipes.

Please check out my post in the wood fired oven section and help me make an oven decision.

Welcome to the forum, I liked the story of your trip to Italy. Good luck with your experiments!

I have not posted anything recently, so I thought I'd post a photo of the pizza I made today.The only change to my usual recipe is the addition of a little bit of sour dough (which lately I've been doing). It gives me a more flavorful dough.

I tried the "white flour" recipe (for bread flour) given in Bonci's book, which I translated into the following formulation:

Flour (100%): Water (70%): IDY (.7%)Salt (2%): Oil (4%): TF=.103 (thickness factor was calculated from the info given in the book)

Mix yeast and flour in a bowl with wooden spoon. Add water. After everything is well mixed add the salt and oil. The dough will be soft and shaggy at this point.

Transfer to another well-oiled bowl and let it rest for 1 hour while covered.

Perform a total of three stretch-and-folds separated by 15-20 minutes.

Place the dough into an oiled bowl and drizzle some oil on top of the dough and rub it over the surface. Cover the bowl and refrigerate for 24 hours.

Remove dough from refrigerator and let it sit for 10 minutes. Divide the dough into desired size and perform a single stretch-and-fold. Let the dough rest for 1.5 hours.

Stretch dough on floured work surface until it is roughly the shape of the pan. Place the dough in an oiled pan. Cook at 450-475 degrees for about 25 minutes.

I made the dough in a round 16.25-inch PSTK pan from Lloyd Pans and I used GM Better For Bread Flour. It turned out quite well. What I like about this dough is that it can be baked in your friend's anemic home oven using just a pan.

On the next go around I think I'm going to do one less stretch-and-fold and/or increase the hydration a bit as I had difficulty stretching the dough to fill the pan.

Hi Norma. Looks like a pretty wet starter to me. If I had to guess, I'd say it's about a 100% hydration starter, so the ratio would be about 1:1. That's also the hydration level he calls for in his book, of course. Any reason to think it might be different?

Hi Norma. Looks like a pretty wet starter to me. If I had to guess, I'd say it's about a 100% hydration starter, so the ratio would be about 1:1. That's also the hydration level he calls for in his book, of course. Any reason to think it might be different?

totally_baked,

Thank you telling me that Bonci does call for a 100% hydration starter in his book and that is what it looks like to you too.

I really did not have any other reason to ask that question about the flour to water ratio except that my starter doesn't quite that thick when it is active and I use 100% hydration for my starter.

Funny, Norma, my starter doesn't look as thick either. Hm. That could be protein level or temperature or starter activity or lots of things. Bonci says to, "use the same kind of flour that you will be using for the dough as a whole."

Another curious thing that I noticed in his book is that he says, ..."prepare a starter for use, 1 to 2 hours before you plan to make the dough..." One to two hours? Sounds premature to me. Hmmm, the Italian version of the book says "at least two hours"...according to Google translate..."almeno due ora". I would say closer to 4-6 hours is more in my ballpark but who am I to question the master? Chad Robertson at Tartine in SF says the starter is ready as soon as it floats so who knows? Not me. I'm just a Jr Pizzaiolo on a good day...

Funny, Norma, my starter doesn't look as thick either. Hm. That could be protein level or temperature or starter activity or lots of things. Bonci says to, "use the same kind of flour that you will be using for the dough as a whole."

Another curious thing that I noticed in his book is that he says, ..."prepare a starter for use, 1 to 2 hours before you plan to make the dough..." One to two hours? Sounds premature to me. Hmmm, the Italian version of the book says "at least two hours"...according to Google translate..."almeno due ora". I would say closer to 4-6 hours is more in my ballpark but who am I to question the master? Chad Robertson at Tartine in SF says the starter is ready as soon as it floats so who knows? Not me. I'm just a Jr Pizzaiolo on a good day...

totally_baked,

Thanks for telling me your starter does not look that thick either. I tried many unbromated flours to feed my starter and it never seemed to make any difference in how it looked in thickness when it was active enough to use.

I really don't know what starter Bonci is using to prepare his starter, but 1 hour seems to short to me to for a starter to become active enough to use. I wonder why the Italian version says “at least two hours”. My starter can become active enough to use in a shorter amount of time than 4-6 hours. I agree who supposed to question the master though. I am also learning about starters.

Gave this another try with GM Better for Bread Flour and I increased the hydration to 72%. Baked at 475 for about 20 minutes in an oiled Lloyd 16.25-inch PSTK pan, no stone. My wife says that it's the best pizza I've ever made, including all the things I've made in the Blackstone. I think she liked the crunch/firmness of the bottom.

Given the good results and the general ease of making this dough (you don't need a lot of exotic gear to pull it off) I think that it makes for an excellent intro into the world of pizza making. This has piqued my interest in pan pizzas. Now that I've done a little more research does anyone else think that this formulation bears a very strong similarity to the Spumoni Garden's dough?